Vox Day posts a response to his most recent article in which a homeschooling mom provides thought provoking commentary about modern women who have, “allowed themselves to be duped into adopting unnatural masculinity.” Great commentary, go read it!

Is the result of women suppressing their natural feminine tendencies to become cold and calculating? I’ve seen enough evidence to support that assertion in my 28 years. Anyone else?

This entry was posted
on Monday, February 21st, 2005 at 11:26 am and is filed under Politics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “Cold, calculating women”

My own experience with women in traditional male occupations (including badge-wearing law enforcement and corrections) is less that they suppress, more that they think that they have to be pretend men. They had a good case in the early days, since we men tend to confuse our talents at logic and organization as the only valid talents.
The bad female officers I worked I think of as “Jane Wayne.” They would escalate things into physical combat that they couldn’t handle, leaving three or four guys to handle the situation. I don’t think in any of these instances that the female instigator ended up in the emergency room. Some of us did.
The better ones were those who came from the female perspective of treating the relationship as important. Many’s the time I saw a situation, which with male officers or Jane Wayne would’ve become a fight, settled with smiles all ’round. Not a one of these gals was in any way a coward. Nor, unlike a lot of the rest of us, did they have to act big’n'bad to prove that.
Fact is, a lot of joints and a lot of white collar corporations would be improved if they not only hired women at all levels; but then let them use their own gifts, not the talents with which the organization is already overloaded. When female lawyers start thinking like females as well as lawyers, we may see a lot more settlements and a lot fewer lawsuits. When female doctors do the same, we may see a lot more patients treated like people, not diagnoses. There are times when logic and the precise application of the principles of reason are the right tools; but many a buck has been made from an intuitive leap. Whether a woman is in the home or in the board room, for Heaven’s sake let’s let her be a woman!

The main thing I don’t like about this kind of talk is that it implies that the way women think is not based on reason and logic (i’ll put aside my complaint that this talk overly generalizes as well, ….). If there is good reason to care about someone’s feelings, say, for a doctor to care about his/her patient as a human being and not just as a disease, then we all should act on that reason. If women exposed that reason, great. We all should be grateful.

What I don’t like is the wrong implication that empathy, feelings, etc., are antithetical to “hard reason and logic.” By drawing this non-existent distinction, we deem it OK to think that men are good scientists and women cannot be. THat’s horse crap. ALL good thinking must conform to the laws of logic (explain to me good thinking that does NOT conform to the basic laws of logic); the key point is that women might recognize reasons that men have not recognized because of their tendencies, socialization, etc.

I don’t think we should condone giving boys puzzles and little girls little pink dolls because only boys can be thinkers. The fact that that woman’s engineer-husband does not find good female engineers does not mean anything — we treat boys and girls differently from birth, and THAT might be the reason for the disparity — not because women’s minds are incapable.

I REALLY object to this claim: “I see their footprints on the backs of their beaten down husbands, who must compete now with their wives in intellect, status, earnings, and parenting.” My wife is brilliant and has, at different times during our relationship, made more money than me. Do i care? No — I love it. The woman’s statement implies that men SHOULD care or NECESSARILY care to compete with their wives’ intellect and earnings. A better society would be one in which men value their women for ALL their good attributes, whatever they may be, including a good intellect. Only insecure men care to be smarter than their women.

Does nobody ever mention the fact that modern men tend to be cold and calculating, and that this is not a naturally masculine aspect? I’m afraid that men are more likely than women to win certain macho pissing contests (those involving muscle or status, for instance), but turning everything into a pissing contest is harmful and wasteful no matter who wins. It’s certainly got nothing to do with logic or organization — any fool can be macho. Mathematics, on the other hand, does not involve social hierarchies at all.

Let’s dispense with the inapt labels “masculine” and “feminine”. People shouldn’t act like idiots regardless of gender. When a woman acts like an idiot, she is not being unfeminine, she’s just being an idiot. And when a man acts like an idiot, he is not being manly, logical, natural, or praiseworthy. He’s being an idiot.

Oh, and Simon — right on! My mother is a physician who worked when I was a child, taught me algebra, and has always made more money than my father. She is an amazing role model to me, and I’ve never felt betrayed by her choice to work outside the home. I wonder if Vox realizes that’s even possible.

I diagree that the labels “feminine” and “masculine” are inept. I agree that both men and women can be, and often are, indiots, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t mascline or feminine idiots.

“Feminine” describes things that are uniquely female, like mothering, nurturing, ovulating, and other things that things that men don’t do as naturally. “Masculine” describes things that women don’t do naturally, but men do. Obviously the labels aren’t black and white, there are very sensitive men, and tom-boy women. But I am a tom-boy woman, I never wear make-up (ok rarely) I love to build things with my hands, I enjoy competetion. I’m very proud of these things about myself, yet I do not think they are antithetical to my feminity.

My husband is a very senstitve guy. He’s intune with himself emotionally, and people who are feeling bad and put out call him up to talk. He’s not very competitive, and dosen’t like to build things. In fact when we got married I brought all the tools into the relationship and registered for more. This isn’t in opposition to his masculinity. He is driven to provide for us so that I can stay home with our daughter. He strives to always be increasing his knowledge (not that women don’t but we do it differently). He sees our sex-life in distincly different, and masculine ways that I do.

I think we are in error if we try to boldly define who is masculine and who is feminine, because it isn’t always black and white, like I already said. But I think we are in greater error if we say those things don’t exist, because they do, and they are ultimately valuable for society.

Devona - I’m not saying that there are no differences between men and women. Certainly, I don’t think that men ovulate or bear children, and it’s built into the definition of the word “mother” that all mothers are women (though of course, anybody can be a parent). There are social differences as well — aggressiveness from me is likely to get a much different response than aggressiveness form my husband — and differences that combine social and biological aspects — I have a higher risk than my husband of suffering violence or sexual harassment. I deny none of that. But I’m sick of people dividing personality traits into masculine and feminine; the labels are inapt for that purpose. I certainly didn’t mean to challenge anybody’s identity as a man or a woman, though I think those identities are often made to carry more constraints than they ought. For instance: Vox’s correspondent bashed women who learn or earn as much as their husbands, and seemed to be implying that women don’t belong in careers or higher education. As a thinking human being, I have a real problem with that.